Final Poster

Final Poster.

I took the orb in the background away, because I felt it was distracting, and unnecessary.

Making a Poster

Poster #1 and #2

Two different angles.

This made Happyman look too much like he is uncaring, and Unluckyman is his

unwilling slave or something.

#3

So I rejigged it about a bit. Making the Happyman more in touch with Unluckyman, more sympathetic.

#4

Tried playing around with the lighting, but to no avail. Far too bright now, mainly cos the floor is grey. I am unsure... Actually it doesn't look too bad. Hmm.

Showreel and Final Film

I am so close to finishing now. Am literally re-rendering a few more shots and putting the last few scenes in my film. Also producing my showreel, which is looking nice. I am comfortable, for once, with the knowledge I will finish by Thursday, ready for my handin. I cannot show any renders, because my blog still will not let me upload videos, but I will upload it to youtube when it is completed.

These third year BA students have suddenly become very noisy. I will try to ignore them and continue with my work.

ANYWAY, I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Rowland Lee ( http://www.rowlandlee.com ) who has produced my music and Alex Russell ( www.SonicBoomFilmServices.com ) who produced the sound effects. These two professionals have worked tirelessly to give me a wonderful sound track, and they have done it all for free. I cannot thank them enough.

Almost Finished

Close to finishing now. I am just doing post production stuff, re rendering shots that I do not like. I have Rowland and Alex making music and sound for me, so that will be helpful. But I am worried, due to miscommunication, that Alex is under the impression I am going to be paying him, but I just don't have the money. If he does not like this, then I will probably have to make my own sounds, so I need to get cracking on this ASAP. Sigh.

Credits

I have started making the credits.

The animation is finished and sound is being made, but this is pretty much the only thing I can show at the moment.

Come back for more!

Done!

It has been a while since I have updated, but I have been veeerrrry busy!

I have been in university all last week sorting out the editing in the morning and afternoon and animating the last few of my shots in the evening so that I could send it to Rowland as soon as possible. With a bank holiday friday 22nd and monday24th, if I didn't complete the film by Thursday then I would have to wait a whole weekend before I could send it to Rowland, and obviously I wanted to get it done as soon as possible so he would have plenty of time to send it back to me. Otherwise I would get stressed as we approach my deadline.

Over this week, I had worked harder than I have ever done to get all animation complete AND rendered in a quality that is suitable to call complete. There are still many scenes that aren't exactly finished, for example, some of the beginning scenes do not have rain in them and others need more background characters or little edits to them. However, overall, the timing of the whole film is what was important for Rowlands sound edit, so I concentrated on getting the main animation complete and having everything rendered.

I pulled an all nighter to animate on Tuesday, spending most of that morning rendering many shots. With no sleep, I went into uni at 10am on Wednesday and stayed til 5pm, getting more work done. With the intention of going home and sleeping, I actually went home and stayed up until 4am attempting to finish the last few bits of work and get them rendered for Thursday, my very last day. I went to bed extremely tired at half four. Then I woke up at 8am so I could get to uni on Thursday, where I spent the entire day in uni finishing off my film. Jud advised me that there was too much of a jump between a shot where they were standing still, to suddenly walking towards the dome, to suddenly standing outisde it. It didn't follow, so I had to reanimate the walking so that it showed them stopping outside the dome so the shots made sense. Then I had to render it again, and even without rain it still took two hours.

Long story short, by the time I had finished all the scenes and was ready to put it all together, it was quite late at night. At 7.20pm, I only had one more shot to render, and then I could export the film from Premiere and I was done! A security guard came and knocked on my door and told me I had until 7.45, and then I would have to leave, and I told him I would try my best to adhere to that. Panicking, because I only had twenty minutes, I took the rendered shot and put it into premiere, and clicked export. It estimated five minutes to export, which was perfect. Then it went up to ten minutes. And it continued to estimate between 8 to 10 minutes for the next half an hour, which was infuriating. For the entire time it was exporting, my attention kept shifting from the little blue bar that represented it's progress, to the time which was ticking away. It was 8pm now, and the guard guy still hadn't come back, so I assumed he was running a bit late on his closing down of the building, which worked out fine for me because I still needed a little more time. It finally finished exporting, and I had to save it to my hardrive, panicking because the guard could come in at any moment and boot me out, and I was SO close! But I did it! It was saved and ready to go, on my hardrive. And I wasn’t kicked out or anything. He never came back. So I counted my blessings and packed my stuff up and left, at about 8.25ish. Admittedly, it was half an hour later than the man told me, but I thought it was okay because I was able to finish before he came back for me.

Unfortunately, as I left, the doors were locked and the alarms started going off. I was locked in, and couldn’t get out. Turns out that he was obviously not going to come back for me, even though he knew I was there and should probably have checked. After about ten minutes of not really knowing what to do, I finally found a number to call on the uclan website and phoned security, and the guard who originally told me to leave an hour ago appeared at the door to let me in, and he was furious. He yelled at me a bit for not leaving at quarter to and told me that he was going to report me and the police were involved and all sorts. I am kinda assuming he was referring to the police because I had Wensdi call them on my behalf.

I don’t know what is going to happen in regards to the report he is going to write up. I hope it isn’t something too severe. I hope you understand why it was so important to me that, after all the work I had put in this week, I had to get this finished that Thursday.

But I am close to finishing now. Admittedly I have lots of shots to rerender before the final draft, and I need to animate lots of cartoon background characters which I have plenty of time to do now, because my deadline has been pushed back to the 19th May. Better get cracking...

Update.

Well, I haven't been on in a while. My workload is getting intensive as I near the end of my course, so I don't really have the time to be uploading individual shots at the moment. My brand new schedule, updated since the last one, allows me more free time after my first edit on the 25th April (the day after my birthday, in case you wanted to know), so maybe I keep update more frequently then.

Overall, it is going well. My workload seems doable now, so I think I can get it done. Of course, I am a day behind my schedule, but a day behind is better than two months behind, which is what I thought I was at until recently, so all is good, right?

Yawn.

I am tired.

Timetables and Storyboards

Here is a small little schedule I have written up, to help me work out what I am doing this month, and what needs to be done to finish on time. By the beginning of may, I need to be on the final edit. So if I stick to this, I'll be fine.

Although, I did find out recently that Jud will be away during my editing week, so I will have to finish sooner. Sigh. More work I guess. Here goes!!

Also, while I had time at work, I made a quick storyboard showing what will happen in my upcoming *slightly edited* scenes.

Rain Problems

Here is a combination of two seperate shots I have produced recently. I thought they may flow better when together, otherwise there is no indication of where the camera is in relation to the scene.

Or rather, this is where I would post the video, but it isn't working for some reason.

I haven't done much though. My week has been preoccupied with sorting out problems related to this rain malarky. I hate it. It's causing so many problems but is unfortunately really necessary. Oh well. To work I go!

It's raining, it's pouring...

Trying to get my head around making rain. It is taking up sooo much of my time that it isn't even funny anymore! Seriously, there are so many issues involved here, and this is just for one shot. I need to copy and paste this for the next ten scenes!

Sigh.

Orb

Remember the old version of my orb at the centre of the dome? It's meant to look all technical and complicated. For a while I was thinking of adding a texture to make it look like it has lots of wires.

Now I think its just easier to make the wires:

Tadaaaa!

I think it looks better. And I added the middle bit myself on a whim.

Still Working

Still working away on scenes. Getting renders done as I sleep, but they are exported as tga files so its hard to see how they look.

That is all.

Chase scene sooon...

Started animating the jump and fall, but I do not like the timing. It needs to be spaced out more...

A bit like this. Plus I want him to get up and run too, so here he is!

Catch The Bomb and Miss

Ok so this is a slight edit on the timing....

And it leads into this:

The bomb lands on the floor and has grown wheels. One of the edits on the first video, besides the slower speed, is the addition of the wooden plank appear already. I need to add Happyman falling to the floor now.

CATCH THE BOMB!!

Uhoh a bomb!!

Catch it catch it catch it!!

This is the real time version, but I want to slow it down as a slow motion jump.

Like this:

Rendering

No movie clips to upload today, for the past week or so I have been trying to get my first two scenes complete in time for rendering, which I want to begin as soon as possible. I am finally ready to render now, my first scene that I have posted here in the past finally has a textured background (which took ages to load into every scene as I also had to replace the characters with their smaller file size counterparts that are already being used in scene 3) and I have also created an intro scene, which consists of exterior shots of the dome with people seen walking towards it. obviously I don't have the crowd of people I once wanted, but what I have will do considering the small amount of time I have left.

Having issues with the rendering though. Even though I am ready, the university computers are not. They are having network issues and 3DS Max shuts down whenever I load up a scene.

So it may be a while before I am up and ready to go.

What on Earth? Part 2

ooooo...kay!

So, I've been returning to scene 1, adding the new background and replacing the characters with smaller file versions and loading the presaved biped movements onto them. It's been going fine so far, even with random lighting problems.

But what is going on here???

They're meant to be facing each other. And their teeth are meant to be INSIDE their mouths.

Entry Allowed

Ok, so I can begin putting lights on these scenes now.

This is the card scanning scene again.

But it's way too bright!! What's going on?

Turns out, because I imported the barrier into this scene fully textured, I need to re-exclude it from my massive lights which are only meant to light up the sky and the do

me. Ok, no problem...

Better...

But the timing needs altering...

And here is my playing with the initial lighting to get the strength of the light right. I wanted it bright, but not too bright.

Experimenting

Some things I am playing with for overall improvements. Look, a sky! and also a skyline. Either black or faded, I think I'm gonna go for black.

Also added some texture to the barriers, cos they were looking quite dull.

Finally, playing with that lighting, because it was far too dark in that scene I showed before. How much lighting though? Too much and I get massive unwanted shadows. Not enough and you can't see what is happening. So, it's a balance thin...

What????

Too bloody light now!!!

Something is going wrong here.

Need to look into it before I can continue...

So I rendered out a scene to see what it looks like with textured background and textured suitcase.

2 hours of rendering whilst I was at work. Result?

Too dark.

Sigh.

That's okay, I'm adding an extra light as we speak!

Bomb and Suitcase

Okay, so here is the proper bomb scene now, as you can see I have included the reaction of Happyman, as next he jumps t the rescue, to touch the bomb and turn it into something safe.

I'm taking a brea

k for the moment, gonna go back and sort scene 01 and 02 out properly, so I can get that rendered as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it turns out that the untextured suitcase in all my scenes can't just be textured with a click of a button. I have to go through all 46 shots I have made so far and add a UVW Unwrap map to every suitcase. Sigh. Fine. I'll do it.

But on the plus side, look! Textured suitcase. Doesn't it look better?

And...

Umm.... Well it kinda looked like a dinsoaur...

And so the many cylinders turn into a bomb. Oh no! SO here are two renders of the bomb I made to see how it was looking. And here is the more final version, except that I am making a few changes to it AS I SPEAK

Making Lots of Cylinders

Making lots of cylinders. Rendered this out to look at the speed, and it's a little fast. Lets see what its like slower...

Much better, but the arm should move more when he points. Gonna change that and get to work on animated the rest of the boy

Still playing. I'm worried I may have to change the pose...

Yatta!!

He makes a cylinder! Hoorah!

This gave me many troubles too, although I like the knuckle clicking, I was unsure how to get there from being hit in the head. I think this will work, I'll know more when it is all together.

Another slight change, more rotations on the cylinder and slight alterations on the hands.

How to Imagine A Cylinder 3

Here are the changes I said I'd make.

How to Imagine A Cylinder 2

Making a Cylinder, slight changes now.

Hope its a bit better.

Although I don't like the wagging, I may get rid of this.

How to Imagine A Cylinder 1

This scene is taking me far too long! So many problems.

Right, I want to change how he pulls the slides down. Its the same way he always has before, but he is more desperate now, so perhaps if he grips it tight with his fist as he pulls it down. Also, his body moves up and down too much, so I need to change that too. His hand is supposed to be holding his face kinda thing, but moves away last second so that needs changing. And I'm not even that sure I like the whole sliding hand thing. I don't know, I'll come back to that if I have time. What else? Finish the pose for making the cylinder, and move on FAST! It's March, so I'm running out of time! Come ON!

Buzzsaw Finished

Final Buzzsaw version. Done.

Buzzsaw Two - Timing

Playing with timing some more. More of a delay.

And even more of a delay. I think I like this the most. I may delay it more and add a reaction. Looking at it now I'm thinking it needs correcting. If the top falls off in a delayed way, then it will fall differently.

That's better.

Buzzsaw One

Ok, so here is the buzzsaw finally. He makes it, it cuts the chair up. Don't like it, gonna play around with the timing...

Slight change. The chair had its visibility keys in the wrong place, hence why the chair flashed. Also, I delayed the chair falling apart just a little bit.

Reflections

Hey look, I've made the bowling ball all shiny and reflective. It makes it a tad more realistic, thank you Mario for showing me how.

How to Imagine A Cylinder

Okay, I'm getting to the point where Unluckyman makes the bomb. Happyman is meant to be panicking by this point, but I just can't get the scene to look right. The jacket is all screwed up, and I don't know what to do with that hand. What can I do with it??

How to Imagine A Square

I prefer this shot to the last one. Just changing the position of the arms makes it so much less.. generic and boring. Plus it effetively leaves him one hand free which really helps for the next shot I'm doing. So it's win win. I figured, seeing as I want him to cover his eyes for the next shot, I can't have him holding the cube with both hands, obviously!

How to Imagine A Circle and Square

Two new scenes. First, here is the next time he pulls down one of those slides. And makes a circle.

Plus, he also makes a cube. However, I do not like how this one has turned out. He grabs the cube wrong.

How to Imagine Basic Shapes Part2

Ok, edit made.

Animated UVW Mapping Gizmo to move the texture, and biped slowed down.

But I think it should be slower. Just a little, the shaking hands at the beginning.

How is this, as a little bit slower?

How to Imagine Basic Shapes

Happyman is now going to attempt to teach Unluckyman how to imagine some shapes. Back to the basics.

This scene needs some changes. First of all, I need to slow the last part down. He gestures too fast, he moves too fast, and you can't read the sign.

Second, I need to find out how I can make the banner look like its sliding down, not squeezing in. You know? I had to use a squash to make the banner move, but the textured picture changes shape too.

Bowling Ball Landing

Ok, extending this scene even more.

KAPOW!

I don't think there is much I need to say about this, it is self explanatory...

Going back

Ok, taking a slight U turn here. It has been brought to my attention, and rightly so, that it is silly to have such a big chair for both of them. Their feet are always dangling, and it looks a bit offputting.

So I am spending my time going back to all the scenes I have already done and shrinking the chair, then moving everyone down so they are sitting on the chair, and then reanimating the hands.

Sigh. Lots of work. May have to wait til tomorrow before I can continue...

Editing

Edit.

I'm extending the last scene. I don't want to cut to yet another shot from a different angle, so instead I am continuing the scene from this shot. As a change from last time, I have removed the initial beginning where Happyman watches the ball drop, because the ball has already dropped. So it works better when it cuts straight to Happymans reaction.

I have Happyman attempting to aid Unluckyman.

Literally.

Aid? Geddit?

Anyway, I don't like how twisted Unluckymans jacket looks, so I need to work on the positioning of his arm...

Scene 003 so far so far....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4R7y_dw3AM

Slight edit to the scene 003 so far.

It's on my youtube channel, because of the size. Too big for this blog.

Here you can see the shakey legs have been corrected, plus the next shot has been added.

Scene 003 so far...

What I have of the scene I'm working on so far.

Ok, so this was the third attempt at rendering this, the other two just had niggling little problems so I won't be uploading them.

Actually, this one has one problem with it too. I may upload a better version later. In shot (5 I think?) the tall stilted man should NOT be shaking so much. I do not know why he does...

Ballooons and more textures

Well, I've been putting all my shots together, just to get an idea of what it looks like so far, and one of the things that occurred to me was the speed of the balloon in one of my most recent shots.

Floats up far too far and far too fast. So this is me editing it, better? It didn't look right, floating slowly in one shot, then speeding up in the other.

Additionally, I have finished the rendering of my outside scene, which means I'm practically ready to begin fully rendering my whole scene 1! yay!!

Here are a few pictures of it:

To the left is me comparing the size of my model to the size of my brick textures. The closest building has larger bricks and I wanted to see which looked more realistic. I went for the furthest one, the bricks are smaller.

Below is experimentation with lighting. Trying to get that bloody lampost to look realistic.

And the final thing, here is a few shots:

There are 6 main shops at the front of the street which I paid particular attention to, as they will be used to hopefully show the degradation of shops related to entertaining in this world.

Fire and Balloons and Textures (oh my)

Ok, so I finished the 'moving chair' scene. I think it works well as a story telling device, as WELL as helping me move my chair closer. Plus, I have the next scene done too! Yay!

You gotta imagine a lot of massive fire bursting from those candles...

Right. Gotta get on with rendering this scene, textures and whatnot. Not my strong point, but I think I'm getting there. The first one was too dirty, the second was too uniform. I think the third is a bit better...Plus a little detail where I can...

New textures

Working on some more texturing for the buildings.

Once I get these done, I can start rendering scene one as I animate, help me out a bit with time...

Fire!

So the second he touches the cake, WHOOOMF!

Lots of fire.

Which hasn't been added yet..

Moving once again

Changed the timing slightly again..

Moving again

Okay, here are the movements for this scene.

What do we think?

Yup, far too fast. I need a bigger pause between him straining to reach and him deciding to pick up the chair and move it. Can you imagine how fast his though process must be here? Unrealistic!

I need to think about the motives some more...

Moving

Hmm. I found when I wanted to pass the cake sideways to Unluckyman, he's sitting far too far away! For continuity reasons, I can't just MOVE him closer without explaining why. I could go back and alter the previous scenes, but that would require reanimating a lot of previous shots.

Here is my solution. I hope that it still retains the story, in fact I hope it adds to the story, showing further that you can alter objects after they have been made by touching.

Difficult...

I find texturing very very difficult. I just cannot do it :(

Making a Cake again...

Okay, so here is the scene where he makes a cake. Told ya he makes a cake!

(Imagine there will be flames. Obviously it needs stuff adding in after effects)

Editing a scene

Okay, so speaking to Sarah and we decided that my last version of this scene was a bit all over the place, mainly because of the camera angles. I kept snapping from one side to the other, and had my character head off to the right, then enter from the right. Here is my attempt at fixing that.

However, I worry that there are now two shots that are far too similar. The shot where Happyman crouches down is too similar as an angle to the shot before it. I may need to work on it more.

Making......a CAKE!

If I'd have known you were coming I'd have baked a cake.

Hahaha! heh heh.

Hoooo.

Perhaps not.

Oh well!

Unluckyman is feeling a bit, unsure what he should be doing, and Happyman is suddenly feeling responsible, so decides to show him what he can do by making a cake! Complete with candles!

Seated

Just adding this little picture from the scene I just did. Dunno why, I just like it.

What's wrong with his face?

I have no words.....I don't even.... I mean.... Huh?

It looks like it needs a caption, like it is some kind of advert..

"Good evening. I am Happyman. Some of you may know me as the recent survivor of the

infamous and tragic "Ice Skating Collision" of 2006, but I like to think of myself as more than that...."

Going to sit down.

Deciding to sit down, Unluckyman heads for his brand new chair.

Making A Stool

making A Stool

The importance of references.

I need my Unluckyman to crouch by the stool. I imagined in my head him crouching, leaning his arms on his legs. You can see my first attempt on the left. When I tried making it, his arms couldn't reach, and I had to settle for putting them on his knees.

This looked stupid. So I got up and crouched myself, to see what I was doing wrong. For starters, that position I made is MEGA uncomfortable. When you crouch, you don't hover, you SIT on your legs. Plus your feet go on tiptoes. So on the right you can see how much difference that makes.

I do this often, but I am writing this up as advice to everyone who animates. Always, always get a reference. Get a mirror or a camera and practise movement in front of it. I have a collection of videos on my computer of me doing silly silly things for the animations I make.

References = good.

And how he reacts to it.

I need Happyman to stand up now and walk over to the stool, touch it so it can turn into a chair. However, animating him standing and moving will take unnecessary amount of time, and isn't THAT beneficial to the story, so instead I shall give the impression of him doing that instead. I shall show him briefly standing up at the end of the scene before (see below) and have him walking past in the show above. Done.

But alas, I needed to change the top scene, as when I was animating, I forgot he was holding a suitcase. Doooi!

Making a Chair as well

Unluckyman tries to make a chair too!

Making a Chair now...

Making a chair...

NOW WITH SHADOWS!!!

Scene 003 Shot 01 Part III

I wanted to see how the scene looks with shadows, and also how long it takes to render. This scene took about an hour. An hour!

I need a few backlights on the other side of the dome, as when it zooms out the characters over there are quite dark. Also, I have no idea whats with that strange shadow when the door closes.

Oh, the door closing? It's something I have decided to change. Instead of leaving the door wide open, which isn't very sensible realistically, there will be a big heavy duty looking door on the outside that opens to let them in, and on the inside it just looks like a seamless part of the wall. Obviously when the dome gets destroyed, it will be revealed as a heavy duty door on the inside as well...

A chair! A chair!! It's being made!

And I changed it so that it bounces less harshly.

And changed again so the speed is slightly different.

LIGHTS, camera and action.

Ok, so this is complicated and a bit fast, but I'll try to explain. I'm trying to learn how to sort the lighting out, and it took a lot of trial and error before I found the one I want. I have numbered the fast moving movie to explain what is wrong with each bit.

Ahem.

1. Was the first attempt. Using "Shadow Map" for the shadow has resulted in this strange flickering shadow on his body. Not quite sure why, so I tried again using a different rendering tool.

2. Then I used "Mental Ray" as a renderer combined with "Mental Ray Shadow Mapping" to see if that made a difference. I only bothered rendering a few frames of this one before I got fed up. The shadow was far too pixelated, so I gave it up. Look at that shadow on the floor. What is that??

3. Another attempt with "Shadow Map" for my shadows and "Mental Ray" as the renderer. Not much better than the first shot.

4. Using a different scene now, and it really shows how bizarre that shadow is on Unluckymans body. This was "Shadow Map" again. I don't know why it keeps doing this.

5. Finally, I used "Area Shadows", which makes a much nicer looking sharp shadow, but severely increases rendering time. Unfortunately it seems the most effective. Sigh.

6. And back to the first scene, to see if it worked. It did. Although, there is still a shadow for the umbrella after it is closed and also for the suitcase in Unluckymans hand. These objects were meant to be invisible but unfortunately were 0.005 invisible instead of being fully invisible. That little tiny bit was all that was needed to ruin it unfortunately. Still, I think I know how to use lights and shadows now....

Making A Stand, altered again.

And another alteration. Camera slightly slower....

Making A Stand, altered.

Slight alteration to the timing of the camera, following the child for a bit longer.

Making A Stand, completed?

Ok, so this scene is pretty much finished. I have even included the little kid with a rocket flying by. This shot is immediately after the previous video I have shown with the little dragon. I hope they look good together, but there's a possibility that it will look odd, because he leaves bottom left of screen and arrives top centre, looking a bit wierd. I shall see.

Making A Stand, then he catches an umbrella! Fun times!

Again, just a quick render to see how it looks when he throws an umbrella up in the air and catches it.

It's bit fast. I need a longer pause between making the stand and throwing the umbrella. Otherwise, too much is happening at once.

Happyman Makes A Stand

He makes an actual stand. An umbrella stand. Well its more like an umbrella holder.

Just a quick render cos I wanted to see what it looked like being made.

Are you still bearing with me?

Don't really need to say much about this one!

Did you bear with me like I asked?

Ok, this is a rough idea of what I am planning for this scene. But it absolutely must be finished by today, because I do not want to waste any more time on this, I have priorities!

bear with me

I have a plan for this...bear with me and I'll explain all in the next video...

Golf again...

Another angle...

And again...

Okay, trying this again...

Additionally, I have also just rejigged the golfing scene. Again, to make it look like there is more of an interaction between the golfer and the ball he makes. I thought a nod should suffice for this scene.

Hows this?

Okay, so how about this? I have given more attention to the childs hands as he is making a lollipop. Better?

Hmm, perhaps the kid in front needs to be slowed down, it's too fast now.

Next shot

Here is one of the subsequent shots after the initial overall shot of the dome. I'm hoping that this shot and the shot after it with the golfer will hopefully communicate the idea that everyone's imagination is coming to life.

However, it may need emphasising, as it has been brought to my attention by others who have watched this scene that objects just seem to be appearing from nowhere, with no indication that the characters are making them. I will work on this. The snowman in the background of this scene seems to be the clearer example so far...

Shot 02

Looking up at the huge orb at the top of the dome. I want to put lights and stuff on it so that it appears as though the orb is making all the items become real.

And again from a sightly different angle.

Rocketboy

Another character from the background.

Who hasn't imagined having a jetpack on their back? I do it all the time when I am wearing a backpack! This child is doing the same, throwing a snowball why not?

This.... No words...

No words for how much things like this make me cringe. It's horrible, it really freaks me out. And I can't undo it either, so I'm stuck with this.....sin against nature. Eeeugh.

Scene 003 Shot 01 Part II

Originally it looked like this, but this is the massive massive file version. Note how the new one has a lot more going on, and is a lot smaller.

Also I did a little moving around of certain items...

Scene 003 Shot 01

Finally, here is the slightly incomplete version of scene 003 shot 01.

I'm going for a really busy scene.

Changing clothes

Another background thing going on.

This first scene in scene 3 is quite big, but thanks to all the work I did this weekend, it is only 120,000MB instead of abour 400,000! So excellent!

Jacket II

Well, it turns out after a few hours of copying exactly how my original jacket was rigged to get this new jacket rigged, it still didn't work. Why? Because my original jacket was poorly rigged too!

I have fixed it now, and have smaller file sizes! Score!

Am remaking scene 003 shot 01 using the same movements as before but with much smaller characters, and it's working already! It may have been time consuming, but it will be so worth it!

Step Back

Ok, it feels as though I have gone backwards. The files I am using are too big...AGAIN. So here I am going back to earlier states and redoing some bits so that previous smaller files are completed and still saved small.

I have remade all my background characters. They are now 7,000 each instead of 99,000. Now I'm working on the two main characters. Luckily I already had a mostly complete version of Unluckyman that was half the size of the one I was using, so I'm using him instead now. I have a bit more work to do on Happyman though, his hands need doing (I bloody HATE rigging hands, I'm always rigging hands...) and his jacket seems a bit off. His head was completely undone so I have added new morph targets and rigged the head up again. The jacket is what I'm doing now.

here is a video of the jacket on it's on, moving like it is in a scene. I just wanted to see HOW off it was. The collar is the main thing that needs sorting...

But yeah, this feels like a massive step back. I need to work on my animation, but here I am doing stuff I was doing back in Semester 2.

Don't know

Here's what I don't understand. It happened last semester, and its happening again!

Look at the size of some of these files. On average, it should be around 20,000KB but my main characters are 100,000KB. That's five times the size it should be. Considering that most scenes have two characters in, that's 200,000KB. I'm struggling with a scene at the moment that is over 400,000KB because of multiple characters. But why??

If you look closely, you may notice two characters called 'skullhead'. They both include a full rigged body with the same polys, but one is 7,000KB and one is 95,000KB. Bizarre!

Imaginary Friend Part III

Aaaand finally, the imaginary friend complete with the child who originally thought him up.

This is the child I have rerigged as part of my edit of all previous models. He has eyes now, which is always good!

This is going to go on the end of shot one, scene 3. You will see it when I upload it...

Imaginary Friend Part II

Here as another attempt at the Imaginary friend. Look he shoots confetti! yay!

Chopper

Helicopter?

Again, motion blur.

New golf

Here is a slight edit to the golfer.

A tad bit slower, plus there is a motion blur on the ball and club.

Yay motion blur!!

Golfer!!

As I promised!

A golfer. I'm not too sure how I feel about this, it's much better that the very first time I tried to animate one last year (which I can't find) but I think his arms are a little bit off or something.

Still, not too bad...

Background

Just a-making more background characters! Watch this space for the golfer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMtQjnsoD8c

This is a video I am watching for research on how to animate a golfer. This video has several angles on swinging a golfclub, it's almost as good as having a real golfer teach me!

Longlegs

Another background character.

This is the character that appears a lot during my animatic. A normally short man who dreams of being tall, walks around on huge stilt like legs.

The first two clips show my first attempt at making this character, simply by making the biped legs bigger whilst they were still rigged. This made the legs fatter as well, no matter what I did. I played with this idea for a while but ultimately decided that it would look better if they were spindly thin legs.

So I took Happyman and coloured him differently, gave him a new head and remade his legs, this time longer. Then I re-rigged him.

Voila! The last two clips show my new character, longlegs. I think it works quite well.

Imaginary friend

I have spent most of the past two days re-rigging the child character I did last year. Just like I had to remake my two characters, I have had to remake him as well. His original design did not have eyes, and the hands were not very well made. And because I had to remake him, I also had to begin the rigging process again. If I have time, I will also remake the baby character as well, but there is still the possibility that I will have to cut him from my film entirely.

Anyway, the thumb is proving difficult, so I am taking a little break. Here is a little experiment in rigging for one of many imaginary friends in the dome. Most will be animated in 2D but I wanted to see if I could make simple ones in 3D as well. This is Bip, the creature made of circles. He will follow one of my children in the background of various scenes.

He has an umbrella, cos everyone seems to have one lately, haha. His is slightly different to Happymans though.

Turning around that didn't work.

Originally, I was going to have unluckyman looking around in awe at his new surroundings. In doing so, he turns around whilst walking forward, to get a full 360 view.

But why would he do this, when he is at the entrance to the dome? The only thing behind him is a wall and the door outside. Besides, trying to animate him turning around was an epic fail. As you can see here.

Instead, I shall have him turn around to look at everything after Happyman leaves and as he goes to catch up with him.

What to do with an umbrella?

Ok, so here is the 'problem'.

I was going to spend days and days working out how to model an umbrella that can open and close smoothly. But I ran out of time, and considering it is only for the sake of one shot, Happyman closing up his umbrella so he can put it inside an umbrella stand, I figured it wasn't worth the work. Especially as I am running out of time.Instead, I modelled two umbrellas. One open, one closed. My original solution was to cut from one shot of him with an open umbrella, to the dome montage and back to Happyman, with his umbrella already closed.

However, that seemed like it would be inconsistent and would look more like a continuity error than anything.

So here is my solution. Add a morpher target to both sets of umbrellas. Give the open umbrella a clone that is really open, almost flat. The closed umbrella needs two clones - one that is more closed than usual and one that is slightly closed. Then I can cut from the umbrella open, to the umbrella really open, then slightly closed, then really closed and finally just closed. This will give the impression that the umbrella closes, without it ever actually closing.

TADDAAAA!

What is going on

Do not ask me why it starts off so white.

I have fixed the audio now the video is messed up. Lame.

Sigh

Scene 01 again

What was with the random noise on my first original upload??

Dunno where that came from.

Here is a new upload. New scene even added. Lets hope it works better!

Edit

I've decided that the middle shot in my scene needs to have an extra character walking into the entrance. It looks a bit blank at the moment. The original idea was that the two characters were looking t the entrance to the dome, but you can barely see it, so I have made this little alteration.

Scene 01 rough draft

Ok, the rough edit of scene 01. It differs lots to the original animatic, and is obviously still unfinished.

There are a few timing issues that I do not like, and background characters need to be made and animated. So I am a long way from completion yet...

Pyrats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYDquzEPLsw

I like this video, it is a good mixture of 2d and 3d animation. Good times. That is all. Thank you.

Lol

Freaked out for a second. First I thought this was a drop of water on my screen. When I tried wiping it off and it remained, I started to think it was a chip of some kind in the screen.

It was just the Happymans umbrella.

Gee I feel foolish now.

Right, add the background to this shot and see how the whole scene looks...

First scene

Almost entirely finished the entire of the first scene. Just a few little bits left to tie together. Hopefully, scene 2 will move much faster.

Although, the next scene I will be working on is scene 5, the final scene at the end. If I have the ending and the beginning sorted and I begin to run out of time, it allows for easier editing in the middle to decide if there are any particular shots that can be deleted without damaging the story. Unfortunately, it is looking as though robot baby is not going to be used. The model for robot baby is not even modelled yet, so unless I find a large amount of time somehow, it seems unlikely.

I have until about May sometime. I will need to ask for specific dates, but if May is the final deadline, then I want the whole film finished and ready to render in April. That's not a lot of time...

Swiping card

Here is a scene where the Happyman gets his card scanned. It's a brief shot, but requires a lot of trial and error. As you can see, here are a few of my attempts. I began with a front on scanning, but the angle of the wrist looked completely wrong, so then I started tilting the hand to the side instead. It looks more suave, but still needs work...